Recent Discussions

I appreciate you call Andrei to task on his over-generalization.
Tehre are definitely and obviously lots of people who have found comfort in
a singular mouse and top window menubar world.

I think outside of the over-generalization there is a something a bit bigger
at question. So instead of saying an answer, I'll just try to ask the
question.

If you were developing an OS from scratch where you knew about today's uses
of computers what would you do for
1. a menuing system? Would you even have one at all?
a. is there value in having menus contextualized to their primary
tasks?
b.

Since 1983 Apple has kept its menu bar stuck to the top of the
screen, as opposed to the top of the window like (almost) everyone else.
There are some pros and cons of this solution, but so far I believed the
former are in majority (Tog explained it more lively than I ever will in
his 1999's column "A Quiz Designed to Give You Fitts" [1])

However, this week Apple unveiled a new set of LCD displays, among them
a big 30" monster.

I am looking for nice and interesting examples of
packaging/instructional design of interactive devices (computers, mp3
players, cellphones...). I am in one of those nice projects where you
happen to have more influence than expected, and I want to take full
advantage of it.

Specifically, I am looking for examples where there is an experience in
unpacking the whole thing.

I spent quite a few years in the mid-90s trying to get Kano established as a
basic analytical framework for designers (product designers, in those days).
I believe that Kano and Six Sigma are essentially a bunch of great
principles that have been tied into over-prescriptive methodologies (as Ji
mentioned in his post).

I worked at an enterprise software company where our software had to go through "six sigma" quality review process for one of our customers (major corporation).
As you quoted from your friend, six sigma require customer interviews,
task analysis, and understanding processes from the perspective of the customer
not the company. However, from my experience, usability of the software wasn't fully addressed in six sigma until it was too late. Why?

I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine who does quality assurance
for customer service processes. He just started work at Bank of America in
charge of quality so I was wondering what he did exactly.

I had a couple of suggestions from people to try and keep this list focused
on IxD and not let the content go off in all directions. This does not
happen often here b/c of self selection mainly but every so often a topic
like "should I use this color or that color" comes up. While this may have
"DESIGN" relevance it is rare that it has IxD relevance, so I'm putting my
moderator goggles on and will try to guide people in the right direction and
interrupt threads from time to time that just seem like they are too
generic.